“The Internet of Things” predicted to change our world

“The Internet of Things” is predicted to change our world. At the Business Forum breakfast meeting on Thursday 2nd November, Charles Paumelle, CEO of Microshare.io put forward his top ten predictions for these changes:-

Every “Thing” will be connected. Currently there are about 10 billion connected devices about 1.5 items per person but by 2020 it will be about 50 billion items or eight items per person encompassing automotive, healthcare, consumer electronics and utilities.

Connectivity for “Things”will be free. Different strengths of connection can cover different sizes of areas. An NFC connection is very short. An LP1 low powered network, such as sigfox, is designed as a global network and covers a very wide area – perfect for connectivity of the Internet of Things.

Finding “Things” manually will be as quaint as navigating by maps.

Your city will be hyper-connected. Barcelona estimates that IoT systems have helped save $50 million on water, increased parking revenues by $50 million p.a. and generated 47,000 new jobs. Using smart lighting, which uses movement sensors mounted on lamp-posts all over the city so that lights only come on when someone moves in front of them, saves an additional $37 million annually.

Your house will have five times as many sensors as you have connected devices today. Insurance companies will want to know whether your doors are locked and when you are at home.

Smart agriculture already tracks crop yields but is growing to encompass soil mapping, fertiliser applications, weather, machinery and animal health – all monitored by sensors. You will know how good a vintage a wine will be months before it is harvested.

Smart offices. There are many ways to make office use more efficient and these will include hot desking monitors to show where desks are available, toilet monitors to show which ones get used more frequently and so need more cleaning.

Insurance risk will be based on real data and not historical data. Already there are health monitors – many people wear them every day. These could be used to predict problems as well as adjust your insurance premiums.

Your data will grow and we will be flooded with data. Your organisation will be handling petabytes of data – one petabyte = 1000TB. A jet engine generates 10GB of data per second.

Three to five data Marketplaces will emerge and will be worth many billions of dollars.